


Devour The World

by lumiere42



Series: Under The Surface [1]
Category: All Grown Up!, Hannibal (TV), Rugrats
Genre: Crossover, Eating Disorders, Gen, Graphic bulimia stuff, Mental Health Issues, No Cannibalism, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Not Crackfic Either, Underage Drinking, the special tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2013-06-20
Packaged: 2017-12-15 15:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/851131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumiere42/pseuds/lumiere42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Lecter gets a new patient.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Devour The World

_  
_*********

_To me, a wicked man who is also eloquent_

_Seems the most guilty of them all.  He'll cut your throat_

_As bold as brass, because he knows he can dress up murder_

_In handsome words._

-Euripides, _Medea_  

*********

This is definitely the weirdest doctor's office she's ever been in. She's sure been in enough of them lately to judge: little white shiny places with hideous fluorescent lighting that makes your skin look all mottled and dead. This place doesn't even feel like an office. Aside from the desk, it's more like a library, big and dim and quiet and more books than she's ever seen in one place before. Warm, too, or maybe that's just the effect of the cup of tea in her hands.

She peeks at her watch. Ten minutes into the session. The last shrink would've been jabbering away by now, trying to _encourage you, Angelica, silence is not therapeutic_ \- but this guy just _sits_ there in the big black chair across from her, this guy with his hideous clothes and stock-still demeanor, just _waiting_.

"Aren't you gonna ask me anything, Dr. Lecter?" Her voice is raspy. Talking still gives her faint grinding pain in her chest and throat.

"Is that what you need me to do?" The slightest of smiles plays around the corners of his mouth, then disappears.

_Oh brother_. "That's what shrinks do, right?"

"It depends on the situation. I thought perhaps you were still having trouble speaking, after what happened." His accent reminds her of Tommy and Dil's Grandpa Boris, just not as heavy.

"It's not so bad. I mean, for a couple weeks after, I couldn't talk. Mom had to buy me turtlenecks, for the - " she gestures at her throat - "you know, the...scarring? I sure hope that fades, otherwise it's gonna _really_ limit my fashion choices the rest of my life. It doesn't matter right away, since I'm probably not going back to school for the rest of the year after what happened, but for the future..."

"You are quite concerned with how you appear to others, then."

"Of _course_! It's, like, _glaringly_ obvious. How you present yourself is really important. First impressions, so on, so forth." She pauses to finish the tea. She can't figure out what it is, something with a bright flowery taste and a bitter undertone, but it's helping her talk more easily. "You probably wouldn't understand that, though."

"Why should I not?" God, he's so _still_. She wishes he'd lean forward or fidget or something, because it's a little creepy.

"You don't look like you do. I mean, no offense, Doc, but a _plaid_ suit with a pink shirt? And that paisley tie is the worst. You really should watch some _What Not To Wear_."

"Sartorial choices are indeed subjective."

She stares at him, brow furrowed. "Are you making fun of me? Because that's pretty rude for a doctor."

"Not at all. I _am_ curious, however, as to why the turtlenecks concern you more than the state of your health."

"Because what happened doesn't seem _real_ , all right?" She thinks about throwing the teacup at him, just to see if _that_ might startle him out of his waiting, prying stillness. She decides to just set it down on the side table instead. It's a pretty cup, delicate and pale, no point in breaking it.

"What did happen?"

"My parents already told you." She remembers that first time here: sitting in the waiting room, listening to her parents telling Dr. Lecter the whole humiliating story so loudly she could hear everything they said. Her dad starting to shout at her mom. Her mom stalking out of the office to pace the waiting room and call one of her business associates to shout at him instead. The car deathly quiet on the way home, silence only broken by her dad's brief comment: _Dr. Lecter says he wants to see you alone from now on, Angelica. You need to actually talk in therapy this time, okay?_

"They told me their version of events. I want to hear yours."

She sighs. It makes her insides twinge. "It's...gross."

"Fortunately, I have a very high tolerance for such things." That faint smile again.

The light in here is turning funny, dimmer and with a strange sparkle about it. Maybe that's just because it's getting darker outside. She tilts her head back against the chair. For some reason, she actually _wants_ to talk about this now. That's weird.

"It was kind of a joke when I was little. 'Hide the cookies from Angelica, she'll eat them all.' I used to make my cousins and their friends steal junk food from their parents and bring it to me. I'd eat everything. My parents never kept any in the house. My mom said it'd make me fat and hyper. She flipped right out when I got old enough to start buying it on my own, took away my allowance a bunch of times. 'You're getting older, you've got to start watching your figure.' One time? She said, "You'd probably devour the world if someone didn't limit you.'

" _Meanwhile_ , my cousins and their friends are scarfing down whole bags of chips and stuff. They've always got it around me and I never had the willpower to stay on a diet for long. The - " she waves her hand vaguely in front of her mouth - "you know, _that_ \- I read about it someplace last year. I thought, how bad could it be? Just to speed things up. My mom was happy about the weight I lost."

"Your parents never caught you?"

"They're gone a lot. Especially since I got old enough to be left alone at night. Business trips, working late. I didn't do it too much at first."

"What made it change?"

"I don't know...I mean, I always used to eat when I was upset. School's harder lately, it's the last year before high school and how you do is really starting to _count._ There's other stuff too. I'm a candy-striper at the hospital. Volunteering looks good for college apps, you know? But there's, like, some _really sick_ people there sometimes, it's sad. I don't know."

"So, a year of this, and then that afternoon."

"Yeah."

He waits. Damn, she's not going to get out of this one.

"My mom was on a trip. Dad was gonna be really late, like, not get in till 2 a.m. I'd just gotten my allowance back again. I was supposed to meet Susie - Susie Carmichael, she's, I guess, my friend - to study. But my parents were gone and I decided, forget it, I'm doing what _I_   want for once."

Dr. Lecter actually smiles for real when she says that. It's mildly startling. She's feeling relaxed, limp down to her toes and fingertips, so she decides to continue.

"I stopped at the store on the way home. Bought six packages of cookies and a lot of Mountain Dew. The counter guy asked if I was having a party. Went home, thought _why not_? and got a glass of whiskey out of the liquor cabinet too, for starters. Worked on my website some while I was eating - "

"Website. Fashion?"

"Advice and gossip. I write for the school paper, too."

"That is your career ambition?"

"I want to be an investigative journalist."

"Ah. You do rather remind me of another investigative journalist of my acquaintance. Are you familiar with the name Freddie Lounds?"

" _You know Freddie Lounds_?" The surprise jolts her momentarily back upright. "Wow! I _love_ Tattlecrime, that woman's, like, my idol."

"If you make progress in therapy here, perhaps I can arrange a meeting."

"I guess progress means having to finish this story?"

"You are correct."

She sighs and slumps back down in the chair again. "So. I was drunk, I was demolishing the food, it was time to - get rid of it - " She stops, remembering. Oreos and macaroons in frantic alternation, washing it down with warm Mountain Dew straight from the bottle, running down the hall to the bathroom and bringing it all up again in a sour, sugary, grating rush before doing it again, and again, drinking more whiskey, and -

"I was going back and forth. I was standing in the kitchen, and all of a sudden I...started barfing right there. The booze got to me, I guess. Then I felt something - coming loose - in my throat."

"You tore yourself open inside." Not a question, a statement. She nods.

"There was...a lot of blood. I ran in the bathroom and locked the door. It wasn't stopping."

"I assume you weren't capable of phoning for help in that condition. Who found you?"

"My - " She pauses. Can she actually call them her friends? "Susie was mad I stood her up. She and the kids from the block were walking home - that's my cousin Tommy, Phil and Lil Deville, Chuckie and Kimi Finster. I'll probably talk about them a lot. Anyway, Susie decided to stop by and find out why I didn't show. They peeked in the kitchen window and saw the...mess."

She swallows hard. She hadn't considered the full awfulness of what they must have seen before. Blood and puke and spilled whiskey and cookie wrappers everywhere -

"Tommy knows where the spare house key is hidden. He opened the back door. They tried to open the bathroom and couldn't. Tommy took the hinges off with the screwdriver from the junk drawer, and they got in. Susie propped me up so I could breathe - I heard later I'd sucked blood into my lungs. I could've drowned if she hadn't. Someone called 911, I'm not sure who. I remember somebody screaming, Kimi, I think. I passed out. Woke up in the hospital. The doctors said I tore my esophagus from barfing. They had to do surgery to fix it."

She closes her eyes. A clear memory image: Susie's horrified face peering down at her, shouting her name as she fought to breathe. Being pulled upright, and coughing a big gout of scarlet spatter all over Susie's turquoise jacket. Tears start pricking her eyes.

"My mom was really pissed. It was an important deal and she had to leave early. She says they'll have to have the bathroom carpet replaced, too." Her voice sounds very far away.

So does Dr. Lecter's, when he answers. "Your mother has very wrongheaded priorities."

She doesn't know what to say to that, so she just stays quiet for a while. The light seems very fuzzy now, filled with tiny rainbow spikes.

"You know the worst part?" she finally says. "My...friends...saved my life, and I _hate_ that they did."

"Do you wish to be dead?" What a thing for him to ask so calmly.

"No. I don't like feeling _guilty_ about what they did. I mean, it would've been pretty awful to see all that. I was really mean to them a lot of the time when we were little, sometimes I still am, I guess, and they did - _this_ \- for me and I don't know what to do. I owe them, and - I couldn't even be nice to them when they came to see me in the hospital." Her voice wavers. She pauses until she can get it under control. "I always had to be the leader. Always. Even if it meant lying to them, or scaring them or making them do things for me. Then they save my life, and I can't even thank them?"

"You are no more obligated to do so than they were to save your life in the first place."

"Huh?"

"Any decent human being would have done the same for someone in life-threatening distress. Would you say your friends are decent human beings?"

"Yeah."

"Would _you_ have done the same for one of them, if the situation were reversed?"

"Of course."

"Then try to put aside that guilt. Nothing that happened is a matter of your being selfish. I would guess that you are not selfish _enough_. You've spoken a great deal about others' impressions and expectations of you, their wishes for you. There's nothing wrong with wanting to live up to those things, but the opinion mattering most should be your own. Particularly when others' expectations are that superficial or unrealistic."

Clock chimes go off in some distant part of the house. The sound is light and hollow at the same time, like the almost weightless skeletons of birds, she thinks. Why can't people become light and empty enough to fly, be up above everything in cool rushing quiet? She _must_ be tired, because everything is staying hazy.

"Our time is up." Dr. Lecter rises, goes over to the desk, and tears half a page from what looks like a blank sketchbook. The way he moves is fluid, a little unreal, but everything is feeling unreal to her. "The schools here require French or Spanish classes in your grade. Which one are you taking?"

"French. Why?"

He doesn't answer. He just writes something on the paper and folds it up, then comes over and presses it into her hand. "This is your task for next time. Wait until you are home and alone to read it. Consider what it means for you - not only literally, not only in relation to what you told me, but figuratively and for the other areas of your life as well."

She nods, just as the office door opens and her mom comes bustling in.

　

She remembers just as she's falling asleep that night. She turns the bedside lamp on. Fluffy is asleep on her jacket, but moves away with a little growling meow when nudged.

The note is in a front pocket. Heavy, cream-colored paper, the expensive stuff. She unfolds it.

Dr. Lecter's handwriting is very fine and controlled, the opposite of her own messy scrawl: _Pourquoi ne pas devorer le monde?_

She has to consider the French for a second before figuring it out: _Why not devour the world?_

 

 

 

 

 

　

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Usual disclaimer: Unfortunately, I own nothing copyrighted herein, and make no profit from it except my own kinda sick amusement.
> 
> This was the result of pondering what the weirdest possible crossover between any two of my fandoms would be. It started as a crackfic idea and then turned serious like whoa. Apologies to any Nickelodeonites for whom this story might be a big swift kick in the childhood.
> 
> Non-cartoon Angelica looks a lot like Kirsten Storms ("General Hospital"'s Maxie Jones), if that helps.


End file.
